1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tape printing apparatus and method of printing and more specifically to a cartridge based tape printing apparatus in which characteristics of the cartridge and the tape within the cartridge are automatically communicated to the printer upon insertion of the cartridge and in which the size of a character or string of characters to be printed can be automatically maximized and adjusted to fit both a width characteristic and a length characteristic of such tape for both normal and rotated text and for both single and multiple lines.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Various cartridge based, tape printing systems currently exist in the art. Most of these systems include a print cartridge having a supply of image receiving tape or image receiving tape in combination with a print ribbon and a printing apparatus having a thermal print head and a platen roller. When actuated, the printing apparatus functions to form or transfer an image such as letters, numerals, symbols or other characters onto the image receiving tape. Examples of such cartridge based print systems are those shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,314,256; 5,322,375; 5,533,818 and 5,649,775. Many cartridge based systems, and in particular the cartridge based system of U.S. Pat. No. 5,533,818, include means for the cartridge to automatically communicate to the printer, specific characteristics of the tape within the printer such as, but not limited to, tape width, tape type, etc.
In these systems, the data indicative of the various printable characters are stored in a font storage means within a portion of the printing apparatus. This data can be stored in the form of bit maps or otherwise as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,649,775, the entirety of which is hereby incorporated by reference, in the form of scalable outline data as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,081,594, the entire substance of which is incorporated herein by reference in the form of Bezier font data as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,967,679, the entire substance of which is incorporated herein by reference, or in any other form such as in vector graphic form or by representing the character as mathematical formulas.
These prior cartridge based print systems also include input means for inputting character code data and other instructions to define the characters to be printed on the tape as well as other properties of those characters including lettering style, lettering size, etc. Many of these systems also include a means which prevents the printer from printing a character of a particular selected size if that character would exceed the tape width.
Some of these systems, and in particular those described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,322,375 and 5,649,775 have an “auto” or “automatic” print mode in which a comparison is made between certain preselected characters to be printed and the width of the tape for purpose of calculating and printing the maximum character size for that particular width of tape. Specifically, U.S. Pat. No. 5,322,375 examines the stored input data corresponding to the characters to be printed and, if they all belong to a preselected type of data (such as capital letters and numerals), the printer generates a printing instruction in which the print size will be maximized (for the available print sizes stored in the printer) relative to the allowable print width of the tape.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,649,775 discloses a print system which improves upon the disclosure in U.S. Pat. No. 5,322,375 by making it applicable to characters other than certain preselected characters and by providing a printing baseline adjustment, depending upon the particular characters to be printed.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,314,256 discloses a printing system capable of printing a plurality of characters in a plurality of lines on a tape and determines the size of the characters to be printed based upon the number of lines to be printed and the number of characters to be printed within a predetermined area on the tape.
While the current systems function satisfactorily, for the most part, to maximize the size of print relative to the tape width, none of the prior art fully addresses maximizing the size of the characters to be printed for both a particular tape width and a particular tape length. Although many applications exist where the length of the characters to be printed is of no concern, some applications require the printed characters to be printed onto a tape or tape portion of defined length, such as a die cut label or a wirewrap application or the like.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for an improved cartridge based print system which not only automatically maximizes the size of the characters to be printed to the tape width, but also ensures that the printed characters will fully fit within the predetermined or selected tape length as well. This need exists with respect to single line text and multiple line text as well as text which is rotated or printed vertically.